Adam:
>> But he (ian Paisley) isn't a Nazi. Classic
> Orangism involves incorporating trade unions
> members into the Orange lodges etc, not
> smashing trade unions. Orangism depends on
> the consent of the protestant working class,
> expressed not unimportantly through the
> ballot box. This has always given socialists,
> catholic + protestant, room to organise,
> especially now, when economic circumstances
> have weakened the hold of unionism over
> protestant workers.
>> Magnus: I haven't read all the posts on
> fascism, so this point may be old. I thought
> that under fascism the unions were being
> corporatist, parts of the state. Although I
> don't think Paisley is a fascist, the
> evidence against him being a fascist can't be
> that some unions support him.
>Adam:
No union supports Paisley. The unions are part of
British Unions, some of which ( eg MSF, GMPU ) also
organise in Eire. These unions are affiliated to the
Labour Party, although neither Labour nor Tory
organise in Northern Ireland.
My point was that Unionsism has never attempted to
completely destroy independent trade unions nor abolish
bourgeois democracy, but to bend and twist both to
divide the working class and maintain the rule of the
mainly protestant bourgeoisie.
Fascism is different. It destroys independent trade unions
and abolishes not just formal bourgeois democracy but
also all the other ways independent organisation of any
sort might develop. Any "Unions" which may exist under
fascism aren't independent workers organisations at all,
but are in fact its precise opposite, a means of preventing
workers organisation.
> When Norway was fascist, the unions weren't
> "smashed", they were made part of the
> nazi-state. Some Norwegian Trotskyites
> thought that they could work for socialism
> and workers' power within the nazi party and
> the nazified unions. This was of course
> impossible, and they're considered Quislings
> now.
>
I don't know anything about this.
( Although I know a man who does ).
When ? during WWII ?
Adam.
Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK
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